HPUX Smartclient tape drives not seen in NVBU Device Mgr. (4046561)

Date: 05/27/2011
Affected NV Version: ALL
OS Version: Supported HP-UX
Plugin version: N/A
Application version: N/A

Description:
When Modifying an existing Library to add a tape drives to NetVault SmartClient(HPUX) using add as shared drive, drive will not show up.

It was found that the Library was added into the Environment after the HPUX Machine had Netvault installed upon it.


Symptoms:

Checks with ioscan -C Tape shows us all the available tape devices are being seen by the HPUX OS level. They are properly zoned as well.

When selecting this NetVault Smart Client node by accessing "Device Management; Add Library; Drive Selection; to add shared drives to the HPUX NVSmartclient, tape drives are not seen.

During a HPUX Netvault installation process, the install script, "sctlnodes", runs a Device Scan looking for devices and then actually creates device entries within a /dev/nvscsi folder for tape drives devices.
When no devices are found Netvault will simply create a default /dev/nvscsi file with the sctlnodes script starting at SCTL100 to approx. SCTLfxx.

You can witness this occurring during the installation where it creates entries using the sctlnodes.sh script starting at 1 using hexadecimal increments until completion.

If a Device is already connected prior to the Netvault install it will then create a /dev/nvscsi device file that incorporates all the necessary device entries based upon the tape drives locations.

The workaround is to simply remove the Netvault Client from the NVGUI; Client Manager screen.
Next uninstall the Netvault Client software upon the machine affected.
Lastly, run the Netvault Client installation once again and it will now see the Tape Drives during the install, it will create the SCTL entries that are needed for these tape drives and complete.

Now you are able to add the SmartClient to the shared drives through the use of the NVGUI, Device Manager screen.